Brent Batten: Collier won't bear Cubs tax

You get a bunch of guys to play a game in a stadium and you sell tickets to watch them.

You pay the players millions and charge so much for seats that families and people of modest means can't afford to come.

Those who do attend are charged $20 to park, $3 for a soda, $4 for a hot dog and $6 for a beer.

You structure your league so that only a few teams have a realistic chance of winning.

Then — and here's the kicker — you get taxpayers to build your stadium for you.

If you're really slick, you can even get taxpayers to build your practice facilities and still charge exorbitant prices for people to sit, park, eat and drink at exhibition games. Such is the plan employed by Major League Baseball.

David Moulton, a Daily News sports columnist and radio talk show host who, whether he wants the position or not, has been anointed the unofficial point person for the formative effort to bring Chicago Cubs spring training to Collier County, knows this formula won't work here.

He insists the pattern used over and over again, most recently to cement Lee County's relationship with the Boston Red Sox, can be broken.

"Yes, yes, yes," Moulton said when asked if the Cubs can be lured to Collier County without government subsidies.

"This should not cost a Collier County taxpayer a penny. It's a deal breaker," Moulton said this week after outlining the movement to attract the Cubs to the Collier County Tourist Development Council.

Moulton's columns earlier this year about the Cubs' potential to end their stay in Mesa, Ariz., sparked interest among private citizens who he says would take the steps needed to bring the team here. Their main fear, he told TDC members, is that they'll extend themselves then get cut off by an uncooperative and obstructionist local government.

But can the mission really be accomplished at no cost to local taxpayers? Moulton's own suppositions chip away at the idea.

Listing the possible scenarios in which funding for a stadium could materialize, he notes that the state of Florida gave Sarasota $7.5 million to help the county lure the Baltimore Orioles. If the state is willing to do that for Sarasota and the Orioles, surely it would do that much or more for Collier County and the Cubs.

But state money is taxpayer money. It comes from a bigger pot and pinches locals more gently, but it is a taxpayer subsidy nonetheless.

Asked if the Cubs could be had without any taxpayer money whatsoever, Moulton takes a deep breath. Yes, he concludes, but, "Not taking that places more of a burden on private investors."

Which is where the burden belongs.

Proponents of using taxes to build baseball stadia point to the economic benefits of the game. A 2009 study of spring training in Florida sponsored by the Florida Sports Foundation, a nonprofit group contracted by state government to promote sports, indicates spring training baseball contributed $752 million to the state's economy and supported or created 9,205 full- or part-time jobs.

Those figures may be accurate, but any viable business provides an economic boost to a community.

Lee County is spending $75 million for the new Red Sox baseball complex that will yield an economic benefit for a month or two each year.

What if it had courted IBM with an offer to spend $75 million to build a research complex? If successful, the ensuing benefits would be year-round.

But you never hear of anyone courting IBM with new, government-funded facilities built just for them.

Zoning concessions, yes. Help with infrastructure, sure. But built-to-order bricks and mortar? They're a business, let them build their own.

That logic seems to fly out the window when the business at hand is pro sports.

The prestige of being a big-league city overwhelms better judgment. It spurs bidding wars that in the long run only encourage more transience.

A living history of soured deals and broken marriages — the sort that have the Cubs in a position to move and an empty stadium sitting in downtown Fort Myers — fail to instruct them as to the fickle nature of sport.

None of this is to say Moulton and the private interests he speaks of shouldn't try.

The economic benefits they tout are real, if seasonal, and the prestige that stewards of taxpayer money occasionally trip over themselves seeking is not without value.

Government assistance of the non-monetary variety is in order and outright obstructionism is by no means warranted.

Moulton, optimistic after a less-tepid-than-expected reaction from the TDC, seems willing to soldier on with the understanding that checks from Collier County will not be forthcoming.

"I think to not try would be a mistake. Let us strike out trying but don't prevent us from getting in the batter's box."

(E-mail Brent Batten at bebatten@naplesnews.com. Follow him at twitter.com/ndn_bbatten and on Facebook at facebook.com/brent.batten. Read his blog at http://www.naplesnews.com/blogs/brentbatten/)